Revisiting the finale

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#1

As my memory of the actual finale fades, I am beginning to have other interpretations of the finale, mainly on how to look at the time line. I am sure someone has mentioned it before somewhere, but here’s my take.

I don’t remember how blatantly the actual finale stated that Earth is our earth. Because I don’t remember, this is my take…

Earf is our earth. When Tigh went into the water and had all those flash backs, that was a flash back of him in New York city before we destroyed it. So instead of the timeline where we are the descendants of the Hera, skin job cylons are actually descendants of us.

So in the BSG verse we are actually the descendants of the 13th tribe, and the events of BSG happens in our future instead of our past.

I like this version better because it then really makes us think what it means to be human, much better than the finale’s moral of “watch out we are getting close to create cylons”.

Though the problem of course is that none of us refers to ourself as cylons or have any idea how to resurrect into another body (could it be far?).

But that could just be illusion due to my amnesia of the actual finale.

#2

Actually doing a rewatch now…

Think the finale is pretty direct that the earth they end up on is our Earth … even with videos of all the freaky japanese robots at the end.

And we’re all part Cylon…so vvt-vvt :smiley:

And besides…Thats our moon, bitches!!! :smiley:

#3

you are right… the moon is the most solid connection there is…

sometimes i wish the series ended at Sometimes a Great Notion :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

Been a while since I watched it too, but I pretty solidly remember them showing continents on Earth, as opposed to Erf where we pretty much only saw clouds.

#5

yeah, i went to BSG wiki and looked up Day Break Part 2, where they had a giant frakking image of Africa from space…

#6

Here’s my modified interpretation from the finale, and it’s probably not new but whatevs:

Head Baltar/Six are not ‘angels’, it’s a clear ‘Clarke’s Law’ situation. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic/spirituality/religion. They are presumably evolutionary offshoots of previous cycles of the humanity->Cylons->Genocide->New Earth rinse & repeat. Likewise, Starbuckbuckbuck was one of their tools/avatars. Her visions growing up were a result of that, and when she fugue’d out and crashed, they just loaded a new copy of her and dropped her back into place.

#7

well put. I like that view of that aspect of the finale.

#8

First rewatch since it aired, and I’m even more of this opinion now than I was then. At the time that was may way of rationalising what was I thought was a disappointing ending, but I think I everyone was so overloaded with expectations. I finished the rewatch of the finale minutes ago, and what I found disappointing with the weight of expectation way back then, I found profoundly moving and elegaic just now. But then I have had way too much red wine and Havana Club, and there was still some pretty dubious science - one million light years away? Isn’t that in Andromeda? Anyway, I think the finale is better with distance, and there was a lot more that I liked this time. Just had to share - it’s been a long time without any BSG, and the likes of V and The Event just don’t compare!

#9

For me I interpreted it as such:
It makes no difference whether the events of BSG are our future or our past - because it’s all cyclical. It is both our future AND our past. Like, we’re either heading into cylon territory or we’re coming out of it, but we’re all basically on that same wheel; give it enough time, and we’ll bound to head to both destinies at some point.

Or…what Thunderscreech said, lol.

#10

For what it is worth, I always took the million light years line as being along the lines of when I say I had to walk a million miles to get a soda. Not literal.

#11

oh that note, i have new views to add.

Baltar and the rest of the people can see head people, because they were all Cylons at one point during the previous cycles. Therefore the colonials just didn’t realize that they all are capable of cylon projection. The Colonials simply lack the ability to trigger projection at will. And head people are the results of beings left from previous cycles activating projection in certain people.

But I am reluctant to explain Kara’s return the same way.

#12

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

#13

So true for rewatches…

#14

I saw them in that kind of vein too. I didn’t really view them as “angels” in the Judaeo-Christian sense, but more like Star Trek TNG’s “Q” beings. They weren’t gods at all, but they weren’t biological or mechanic beings either. That’s why the whole “God” aspect didn’t really bother me about BSG. I never really believed there was a god per se running things…just something invisible to humans and cylons. It wasn’t a force or forces better than humans, just more powerful and with a greater perspective on things.

#15

I actually figured the one true god was actually a union of human and cylon from a very previous cycle.